Carnival of Nuclear Energy 307

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1. James Conca, Forbes – Will The Truth About Chernobyl Ever Come Out?

Yes, it already has, but the truth is so much more boring than the assertions of megadeath, that it generally gets ignored. Today, April 26th, marks the 30th anniversary of the Chernobyl accident, and it is well-known that only about a hundred, not thousands, of people died as a result of radiation, and mostly those were emergency workers, not the public.

2. Neutron Bytes – Dan Yurman, New paradigms emerge for innovation and investment in advanced nuclear energy reactor designs

Designers of advanced nuclear reactors seek to bridge the gap between concept and prototype. While it is early for investors and potential customers to easily pick winners from an increasingly crowded field of advanced reactor projects, new patterns of investment, including public/private partnerships, are creating opportunities for entrepreneurial developers.

3. Yes Vermont Yankee – More bad news for Vernon: Guest Post by Guy Page

Vernon Vermont, Vermont Yankee’s town, is suffering a perfect storm of bad financial news. First, the town tax revenues took quite a hit when VY shut down. Next, many townspeople hoped for a proposed gas-fired plant which would take advantage of the VY switchyard, and would increase town tax revenues. The gas-fired plant won’t be built, though, because Kinder Morgan has cancelled the pipeline that would have supplied the proposed plant. In the latest bad news, TransCanada is planning sell the Vernon Dam —and the state of Vermont is thinking of buying it. A state purchase would also take Vernon Dam off the town tax rolls. These are depressing times for a pretty little town in Vermont.

4. Nextbigfuture – International Tokomak Fusion project delayed another ten years and will cost $4 billion euro more and there are better energy project choices

ITER chief Bernard Bigot said the experimental fusion reactor under construction in Cadarache, France, will not see the first test of its super-heated plasma before 2025 and its first full-power fusion not before 2035.

“The previous planning, which foresaw first plasma by 2020 and full fusion by 2023, was totally unrealistic,” said Bigot, who succeeded Japan’s Osamu Motojima at the head of ITER early last year

Bigot, the former head of French nuclear agency CEA, also said he expects the new delay will add 4 billion euros of cost overruns to the 14 to 15 billion euros estimated so far.

5.
Nextbigfuture provided an update of the other nuclear fusion projects such as

  • General Fusion in Canada
  • Tri-Alpha Energy
  • Helion Energy
  • Lockheed Fusion
  • EMC2 Fusion
  • LPP Fusion
  • Dynomak Fusion
  • MagLIF at Sandia
  • Muon Fusion Japan